Quotes About Initiative

The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative. He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself.

The secret is to throw yourself into the water of life again and again, not to hang back, no reservations, risk everything, but above all strike out boldly with all you have.

If you don't make things happen then things will happen to you.

I had to do something," she said. "I couldn't just sit and wait for life to happen to me any longer.

Everybody wants to do something to help, but nobody wants to be the first.

So are you gonna cry about it like a punk, or are you gonna do something?

considered by itself, should never be used to promote passivity.

Paul said of his colaborer Titus, "I thank God, who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you. For Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but he is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative" (2 Corinthians 8:16-

Costs to productivity. Economists who specialize in measuring economic productivity report that in recent years the only increase in total factor productivity in the American economy has been in the information-technology-producing industries.11 A question that ought to be asked is to what extent the culture of metrics—with its costs in employee time, morale, and initiative, and its promotion of short-termism—has itself contributed to economic stagnation?

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.

Even though it seems like it's big business and impersonal, and "they" take care of it, it really isn't. There is no "they." It always comes down to an "I" of somebody, and in many cases, it's a principal.

Today the vast majority of the people not only have no control over the whole of the economic machine, but they have little chance to develop genuine initiative and spontaneity at the particular job they are doing.

Economists look with some apprehension to the time when we stop producing armaments, and the idea that the state should produce houses and other useful and needed things instead of weapons, easily provokes accusations of endangering freedom and individual initiative.

People were always ready to yield their wills, to worship the hero, because they were not given a chance for developing initiative, stability, and independence, said the great nineteenth-century Russian sociologist Nikolai Mikhailovsky

Please tell me what can I do. There must be something I can do

The future belongs, not to those who have the most, but to those who do the most with what they have.

First ambitions are best. We are less brave later.

Take time to deliberate but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.

acting first and leaving the consequences to take care of themselves.

pluck, courage, resourcefulness

Are you trying new ideas, new techniques, and new technologies, and I mean personally trying them, not just reading about them? Or are you waiting for others to figure out how they can re-engineer your workplace—and you out of that workplace?

In general, meddling stems from a supervisor exploiting too much superior work knowledge (real or imagined). The negative leverage produced comes from the fact that after being exposed to many such instances, the subordinate will begin to take a much more restricted view of what is expected of him, showing less initiative in solving his own problems and referring them instead to his supervisor.

Most people use their calendars as a repository of "orders" that come in. Someone throws an order to a manager for his time, and it automatically shows up on his calendar. This is mindless passivity. To gain better control of his time, the manager should use his calendar as a "production" planning tool, taking a firm initiative to schedule work that is not time-critical between those "limiting steps" in the day.

People who plan have to have the guts, honesty, and discipline to drop projects as well as to initiate them, to shake their heads "no" as well as to smile "yes.